(389d) Designing In Reliability

Most rotating equipment is selected as part of a Capitol Project govern by rules from Procurement with specifications written by in house engineers or outsources engineering partners.  Because of Project spending limits the equipment supplier who is believed to meet the specification requirements with the lowest bid receives the contract.  There are times when the equipment supplier who meets the project costs targets are awarded the orders regardless of the specification requirements.  And then there are those times when the specifications do not adequately describe a process resulting in improperly designed equipment.

Regardless of this traditional process used unfortunately those responsible for Reliability inherit equipment and are tasked to operate the equipment at peak performance for continually longer periods of time.  Of course this is nothing new.  The question is how does someone in charge of predictable operating a plant impact the Project Process and selection of equipment.  Specific applications will be studied showing failed agitation equipments and the efforts over the years to improve reliability.  Unfortunately these efforts were focused on symptoms and not the True Root Cause.  In some cases the plants were designed based on the perfect word and did not account for upset conditions.  In other cases the basic data for the design was flawed.  Either way those responsible for reliability face a seemingly never ending battle.  The studied applications include staggering reduction in operating costs that have led to companies changing their Project Process.